1. What is a hitbox/hurtbox, and what are the differences between the two?
Every character has a bunch of boxes that define their mechanics:
Hurtbox = Usually depicted green or blue, this is the area where your character can be hurt in. Invincibility is simply the absence of the hurtbox.
Hitbox = Usually depicted red, put one over an opponent’s hurtbox to make them take damage and flinch. The flinch stops their action and pushes them back, so putting a hitbox somewhere acts as an obstacle that can’t be crossed. When people talk of move priority, they typically mean a lot of the move’s hitbox extends outside of the character’s hurtbox. (some games do have explicit priority mechanics, but SF4 doesn’t. It’s all about getting your hitbox to hit them first)
Collision box: The “solidity” of your character. The game won’t allow two collision boxes to overlap, which makes it impossible to walk through the opponent for example. Moves that allow a character to pass through the opponent typically reduce the size of your character’s collision box or remove it entirely.
Throwable box / throw hitbox = Same as hit/hurtbox, but determine if a character can be thrown and if a throw will hit or not. Typically colored blue if the hurtboxes are colored green.
See these images for Akuma’s hit/hurtboxes from SF4 AE2012 for example:
The yellow boxes are projectile hitboxes and the purple boxes are projectile invincible hurtboxes. ie. a red box can hurt a green or purple box, but a yellow box can only hurt a green box and just goes through the purple ones.
2. What is a counter-hit/counter-hit setup?
All attacks have three parts: Startup, active frames (when the move can hurt the opponent) and recovery back to neutral position.
A counterhit happens when you hit the opponent while his character is still doing the startup animation of whatever move he did. ie. if he does a heavy punch and you pressed a quick jab at the same time, the jab becomes active while the heavy isn’t yet, and the opponent gets hurt.
Many games give bonuses for counterhits, typically extra damage and/or longer hitstun (a helpless state a character who gets hurt gets put in) for better combo opportunities.
3. What are frame-traps, how can I identify one, does every character have frame-traps, and is it in important to know how to use?
You do a move where your character recovers before the opponent’s does, and do another move. If the opponent decides to press a button, your move will inevitably become active before his does and score a counterhit. Thus frame traps punish people for mashing buttons and encourage them to block. Someone who’s too scared to press buttons is a prime target for throws.
Frame traps typically look like (and are) staggered series of moves. The stagger creates a gap where the opposing character is allowed to do something.
Every character has frame traps, but some are really built to do a lot of them and get good rewards off them (for example Cammy and Cody in SF4)
It’s not imperative for a beginner to understand, but a very useful and necessary thing to learn eventually.
4. I know that a crouch-tech allows you to tech a throw while in a crouching position, but why do people seem to associate it with frame-traps?
Because crouch-teching makes a move come out - usually a crouching light kick or medium punch or the like. So if they’re mashing crouch tech to be safe from throws, they’re mashing a normal move as well. Frame traps punish people for mashing normal moves.
**5. What is the difference between a mix-up and a set-up? **
A mixup is a situation where I can do A or B (or C), they require different responses and you can’t feasibly react to any or all of them. ie. situations where I make you guess right or get hurt.
A setup is just that - something that sets up a situation, usually a good one for the person doing the setup. ie. opponent sweeps you, presses some buttons to time his jump (the setup) and jumps at you. You now have to guess if he does a jump attack (block high) or empty jump (presses nothing, lands quickly) into a low (block low) or throw (tech, but you’d be pressing a button into an active move). He set up a good mixup he can try to get a hit on you with.
6. Difference between a “Link” and a “Combo”?
I wrote an explanation of the mechanics of combos here, it should clear up most of the confusion: Newbie here with a few questions
7. What does it mean if a character only has “900 stun”?
All moves do hit point damage and stun damage. Likewise all have a hit point total and a stun resistance total. “900 stun” means the character can take 900 points of stun damage before getting stunned. Stun damage regenerates relatively quickly if you don’t have to block moves and aren’t getting hit.
8. If I understand correctly, the purpose of a “block-string” is to deal chip damage and create space between the opponent. Is that the main uses of “block-strings”?
Blockstring is just a string of moves you do on someone who’s blocking. There are different kinds of blockstrings with different uses.
Attacks deal blockstun as well as hitstun - ie. blocking an attack forces the defender to block for a time. If you hit him again within that period, he must block the second attack as well, just as he has to take the second hit of a combo.
These airtight series are called “true blockstrings” - they’re important because they don’t allow the opponent to sneak a dragon punch or the like inbetween. A cr.mk xx fireball from Ryu/Evil Ryu is a classic example, which is indeed used to do chip and push the opponent back.
Most blockstrings in SF4 are not true. They have gaps where the opponent can press a button… but he’d get hit by the second move in the string before his move becomes active. That is to say, they’re frame traps.
cr.mk xx fireball is typically a combo, and a false or true string depending on distance.
cr.mp, cr.mp with Ryu/EvilRyu/Akuma combos on hit, but has a tiny gap if blocked, so it’s an effective frame trap. You can see Tokido use cr.mp pressure on people a lot, for example.
9. If an attack takes a long time to come out, does that mean it has long “start-up frames”?
Yes. Startup is the time from the start of the move’s animation to the first active frame when it can actually hurt the opponent.
10. What is “neutral game”?
An umbrella term for the part of gameplay where both players are a bit apart from each other, looking for openings to do damage or start pressure on the opponent, and vying for control of the screen.
These are probably the best distillations of what players do and why in that mid-range walk back and forth pressing pokes type of deal, and more or less the most important things to understand to grow as a fighting game player:
**Ground Game Breakdown
These are wrong. You got your terms mixed up.